The basic message of Luke’s Gospel account for the 31st Sunday in Ordinary Time is that Jesus went into Zacchaeus’ house and Zacchaeus ended up going into God’s house. The message in all three of today’s scripture readings (Wisdom 11:22-12:2;...
My last article’s theme centered on what it means to be a temple, reflecting on St. Paul’s teaching in 1 Cor 3:16. “Don’t you know that you are a temple of God and the spirit of God dwells in you?” I’d like to take the reflection a step further by...
The readings for the Second Sunday of Lent (Genesis 15:5-12, 17-18; 2 Philippians 3:17-4:1; Luke 9:28-36) are the oldest we will hear during this holy season. Their use by the Church goes back nearly one thousand, seven hundred years. In the Fourth...
There is a hidden tonality in today’s Liturgy that reverberates deep within us, a quality to the readings in this Mass that speaks to things at work deep within our hearts and souls. It is, I think, the vision that in a world filled with impossible...
During World War II, shortly after Germany invaded and conquered the country of Yugoslavia in 1941, a young German soldier named Josef Schultz was summoned by his sergeant, along with seven other soldiers. They were marched to the brow of a hill...
Our society, someone has declared, is suffering from “jumboitis”. We need the biggest military, the biggest car, the biggest guns, the biggest house, the biggest business, and so forth. We’ve got bigger and bigger buildings...
There was once a movie called Shadow of the Hawk, in which a young couple and their Indian guide were hurrying up a mountainside, fleeing from evil people seeking to kill them. Because the Indian guide knew the mountain so well, he would be able to...
Once upon a time there was a very sensitive, idealistic young man–we’ll call him Paul–who was greatly troubled by the state of the world; the crime, injustice, and lack of Christian charity which he witnessed or heard about every day was...
